As always, a reminder of the spec according to the SQA (linked below)
Use your own words wherever possible to avoid plagiarism! Quotes are acceptable but have to be in " " as well as explained in your own words. If in doubt, leave it out. If I receive any plagiarised pieces I will have no choice but to report it and it will obviously not be accepted.
The unit assessment questions are such that they could be applied to ANY topic in social behaviour whether it's conformity or non-verbal communication or aggression. Obviously we should pick the one we have studied.
Of course, just giving the name of our topic isn't enough! We need to provide a definition and a proper psychological definition at that! Within your definition you are likely to touch on the KEY FEATURES of your chosen topic. You should draw these out define them or explain what you mean - examples can be used to clarify what you're saying.
What are the 'moving parts' in your definition of the behaviour?
Can you define these separately to give the reader a better understanding of the behaviour?
For example, if I was defining obedience I might say "Obedience is a form of social influence that involves altering your behaviour because a figure of authority has told you to." That's short and sweet but imagine the person reading this has no idea about the topic... you could then provide a further definition for 'social influence' and perhaps give an example of what you mean by 'altering your behaviour' to make sure the reader has everything they need to understand you.
Psst! The names of the pages on this website might also give you a clue as to what the 'concepts' are.
We've looked at several different concepts when it comes to our chosen social behaviour topic. See below for a reminder of the SQA suggestions and see if you can work out which of these are concepts.
Anyone can copy and even reword summaries of research in psychology - neither of these things shows you've truly understood the research and it's implications. When discussing research in the unit assessment, you can break down your response into categories to help you structure your answer. You should already have a summary of research as previously submitted work which will help determine the categories or subheading you might want to use. Explaining the results using the features and concepts we've looked at is crucial for meeting the requirements here as well as CLEARLY STATING how the research has contributed to our understanding of the topic.
Such and such (year) showed that X had / did not have an effect on Y
The researchers explained their findings as a result of... OR The findings could be explained by...
Your whole assessment is expected to be around 800 - 1000 words, excessively over that and it wont be marked. Why? Because everything is 'positively marked', it's tempting to just throw absolutely everything into your assessment and hope you get enough marks... that's not the point of an assessment. Excessively under the count and you've probably not given detailed enough responses.
Mentioned it there but to reiterate, we use positive marking at the college which means marks aren't deducted for getting things wrong. What this means is that if you aren't sure of something, you should probably include it as even if it's wrong it wont detract from your marks!